


Sounds of People

by sparebikes



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Character Study, Hurt No Comfort, Introspection, Karkat Swearing, M/M, gratuitous use of popular culture references, ridiculous abuse of karkat's love of romantic comedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-11
Updated: 2019-10-11
Packaged: 2020-11-23 04:00:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20885774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparebikes/pseuds/sparebikes
Summary: Your name is Karkat Vantas and you’ve just been dumped.





	Sounds of People

**Author's Note:**

> I just needed to put my feelings somewhere. Not beta-read.

Your name is Karkat Vantas and you’ve just been dumped.

It was your fault for even mentioning the idea in the first place, for officially planting the seed of doubt even if you guess this was going to happen whether you brought it up first or not.

You didn’t expect it. You didn’t think that when you said, 

“What do you mean, like break up?” that he’d swallow heavily and put his hands in his pockets, shoulders coming up to his ears as he answered,

“Yeah, I guess.”

He was wearing those glasses, always wearing his damn sunglasses, but you knew he was avoiding looking at you regardless.

You didn’t think this was what was going to happen, all those damn romantic comedies you’ve watched have finally started altering your god damn brain chemistry because you honestly thought that when you said, “What do you mean, like break up?”, he would stand proudly and, in his best Dane Cook voice, tell you that _ ‘No of course not!’,_ that any issue that came your way you would work through together. You thought he would take your Jessica Alba hands while on a bridge at sunset or some bullshit and tell you that there was nothing that could make him want to be without you. And then you would both go back to working at the supermarket or whatever, you don't know, you kind of lost the metaphor at some point. You get the idea.

You think you get it now, you know what all those movies and songs and tv shows talk about. You didn’t think it was possible to hurt this much over something like this. You think of every romantic sitcom you’ve watched a million times over and the countless arcs of the protagonist falling in love only for it to end in some sort of disaster and, while you’re aware they’re not real, you can’t help but think, _ ‘Is this what they feel every time? How do they do this to themselves? Why would they want to hurt again and again?’ _

You think about Jess from _ New Girl _laying on her floor, you’re not even able to remember who broke her fucking heart that time, playing that shitty record about the woman on the lake for days on end and _you get it_. You think about the countless times you’ve watched _ Friends_, the whitest and most heterosexual activity you partake in aside from enjoying movies where Adam Sandler plays a romantic lead and knowing who Dance Cook even _s_, and all the heartbreak the characters go through. It has a different weight now.

You think about Monica and Richard breaking up after having one of the healthiest relationships on the show at that point- completely disregarding the _bizarre _age difference that caused their issues in the first place- and how she cried over his hair that she found in her shower drain and tried to break into his answering machine. You know these are comedic tropes, they’re supposed to be funny and they are always accompanied by a laugh track. And while you don't think you’d ever _want _to go anywhere near your shower drain and coddle some dude’s disembodied pubes, and the phone thing is _definitely _creepy, you can’t help but feel sorry for her now. You kind of get it, and it feels like there's a laugh track playing all around you every time you manage to royally fuck up again and again. The faceless laughter is giving you a headache, you wish it’d stop.

You think about _ (500) Days of Summer _ , about Summer and Tom and how Summer ended things because she thought it was what they needed to do and _ Oh Holy Fuck _ , you’re Tom in this god damn situation. _ Tom. _ You shudder at the thought of being at all associated with someone so pathetic, a character who involuntarily celibate_ dudebros _have spent like a decade projecting onto. It makes you feel sick. But, you guess, that's where your life is at right now.

You think more about Tom and Summer, its been years since you saw that movie and you’ve definitely gotta have a DVD of it lying around here somewhere because its a _ good fucking flick _, but you think about Tom and how he projected and idolized to the point where Summer wasn’t a person, merely an object of his affection. You feel sick again.

You can’t stop thinking about this god damn masterpiece of a movie and the Regina Spektor song on the soundtrack, that you _ definitely _ don’t cry to, where she just wails, _ ‘He never ever saw it coming at all’ _and you think you get it now too. It feels like the rugs been pulled out from under you, like you’re in a pool and suddenly you can’t touch the ground and you don’t remember if you know how to swim or not, and you can’t make your legs move no matter how hard you try anyways.

It's just a lot all at once. You were never good at change.

You think about the scene with Tom and Summer, you think they were having waffles and _ Jesus Fucking Christ _ where did that DVD go and _ how _ is this movie not on any streaming service, but Summer is ending things between her and Tom and she describes them as being Sid and Nancy, and when he tries to make sense of it and says something like, _ ‘Summer, Sid stabbed Nancy 7 times with a kitchen knife. I hardly think I'm Sid Vicious’ _ she replies _ ‘No, I’m Sid.’ _

And the only thing he can say in return is, in utter disbelief, _ ‘Oh, so I’m Nancy?’ _

You think you get it. If anyone was hacking and slashing and destroying everything, it had to have been you. It had to be your fault, it always is. You don’t know what to do if it isn’t, you want so badly to be blamed for something, to be held responsible for your destructive tendencies.

You always ask for too much, too fast, you wear everyone down until they can’t stand being around you. Why couldn’t you be fine with the way things were? You think you _ were _fine but, even unwittingly, you can’t hold yourself and your insecurities back from dragging everyone you care about down to your level. 

It's hard to step outside of your own head sometimes when your thoughts are so loud.

You’ve disabled Pesterlog notifications but you open up the site regardless to see your unread messages; some from Terezi, some from Sollux, one from Kanaya, even Rose had reached out. They all seem to express some sort of concern which makes your stomach turn once again. You choose to ignore these messages for now because, while you’re not a fucking baby, you’re also not totally sure you’re capable of speaking to another being without pulling at your hair and screaming nonsensically. At least it's not too out of character for you. You haven’t been able to get a hold of the crying, it comes and goes and it's always loud and painful. It has made getting out of bed nearly impossible, much less leaving your room.

You stare a hole into your screen at the bright red font now at the bottom of your feed. It's been days, which is to say much longer than you’ve gone without talking in a _ long _time. He had asked for space and you get it, and you know he needs this and he needs to just breathe but you had messaged him anyway because you’re clingy and pathetic and it's been _four days _of radio silence, and uncertainty makes your arms go numb_. _

He was gracious enough to answer, and gracious enough to not just tell you straight up to fuck off but to tell you not to contact him again, at least not now.

When you broke up it had been very, _ ‘It's not you, it's me’ _, and that made the whole situation a lot harder to swallow for some reason. You want the blame, you needed him to see that it was you who had been hacking and slashing. There's a sick thrill at finally being able to blame something on yourself because you are selfish and bad. 

You think maybe thinking that way is wrong, you're not sure why. 

He needed time, you get it. It's just that time has never seemed to move slower and your head is shoved so far up your fucking troll equivalent of an asshole that it might as well be coming out of your mouth, and you honestly couldn’t pull it out for two seconds to think that maybe this is hard on him too.

You think of his glasses, those damned glasses, and his hands in his pockets and you wonder if he was trying not to cry much like you were. You wonder if he hid his hands so you wouldn’t see them shake, if his sentences were clipped so you didn’t hear the tremor in his voice. His Bro and whatever other fucked up shit he's been unfairly subjected to his entire life eats at him. He tries not to let you see and he does a good job sometimes. It's big, you know this, you just never realized how big. Bigger than both he and you combined. You’re suddenly glad that you haven’t had an actual fucking meal since the first day because the sick feeling in your stomach doesn’t seem to be going away.

You’re selfish, you always are. Projecting every insecurity you hyper fixate on and then using it to bother everyone else with instead of putting your feelings aside and just thinking about _them_ for fucking _once_. This incessant need for validation is your problem, not his. You can deal with it alone, you _were _dealing with it alone.

You look up at your wall, to where Drew Barrymore stares out into the sad pathetic state your room is in while Adam Sandler looks at her longingly with his big giant fucking cracked egg of a head. You don’t look at the rest of your walls but you know there's more, posters you mean, all looking out and seeing just how much of a loser you are. You want to tear them down, you think.

You can’t bring yourself to actually move but they’re looking at you and the laugh track is playing and its all just painful.

It's the fourth day today, and you’ve barely left your room since. 

The first day, right after it happened, you had already agreed to dinner plans and your Pesterlog was dinging with messages about when and where to meet and you were having trouble breathing and your legs felt like lead and everything was just _ crumbling. _

When you pulled yourself away, when you left the rooftop and went down the countless flights of stairs and pretended that you didn’t feel wet falling down your face you took a deep breath and you went to dinner. And when you walked into the restaurant it was like the sickest fucking joke, and you could practically feel the laugh track building maniacally until it was just fucking crashing noise because the restaurant was playing one of _y__our _songs. Something sappy and romantic and so fucking _ gay _, that he’d dedicated to you in a rare moment of non-irony, and if it were any other day you would smile but the sea of your friends at the table all turn to you, having no idea of your inner turmoil, and they stare much the same way your posters do. 

As you take a seat and you think about irony and how much fun whoever's writing this story arc of your goddamn life seems to be having, you hope that the laugh track at least drowns out the rest of this song before you consider smashing your head into this incredibly nice restaurant's _ incredibly _ nice marble tabletop. Eventually, the song ends, as everything does, and you try to tune into the conversation but it's like trying to listen while underwater. You promised that you’d be here so here you are and, while your head-splitting migraine is _begging _for silence, you hope the sounds of your friends talking is at least louder than your thoughts.

After dinner and after promises of _ ‘Doing this again sometime’ , _you part ways and are lucky enough to catch your train right as its pulling in so you don’t have to stand out in the cold any fucking longer than necessary. As you get on the train and manage to find a spot next to an old man with a giant basket, you pretend not to feel the wetness falling down your face once more. 

You normally can’t cry in public but you don’t fucking know these people, their thoughts mean dick to you right now after sitting through the longest two hours of your life and wanting nothing more than to be home under a fucking blanket where Will Smith can smile down at you. There's always some fucking whackjob on the train, someone who everyone stares at but avoids eye contact with while messaging their friends about, this time it just so happens to be you.

Its interesting being on the other side of it, you don’t think you quite like it.

When its finally, fucking _ finally_, your stop and you get up hurridly and step out into the cold night air you swear you see all heads turn to you before the train speeds off and you're left alone again with just your thoughts. You drag your palms across your eyes and feel anger at the wetness there, letting your hands move up to clutch and pull at your hair before snapping out of it. Not here, _ get home_.

And so you do, and you can’t bother to partake in any sort of hygiene other than pissing and taking something that's _supposed _to help you sleep because your brain is a tv playing at its loudest setting and you can’t find the god damn remote.

You climb under your covers and you turn on another episode of _ Friends _ because _ why the fuck not _, and you try not to think about Pesterlog or bright red font or the fact that you’re just so fucking sad, and try to tune into some of the episode’s plot.

You think _ ‘Couples break up and get back together’, _it happens in virtually every romantic comedy film or romance based sitcom. It's a trope. A trope that never fails to frustrate you to no fucking end but a trope none the less. You’ve always hated it, it always seemed so goddamn unnecessary to pull two people apart but now you think you get it. You think that you understand that even if the characters didn’t want to be pulled apart they don’t get much choice sometimes.

Couples break up and get back together. Not always, but it's a part of life. Your eyes drift to the screen and you see Ross and Rachel and you fucking _hate _ Ross and Rachel but it took them _ twenty years _to finally drift back to each other. Twenty years is a long time, a hell of a lot fucking longer than four days.

You turn to lay on your back and stare at the ceiling while Monica and Joey argue over a Thanksgiving turkey or something- you’ve seen this episode a million times, you’re not missing much. As you look up at the ceiling you think that you miss him. And while that would have been obvious to anyone with half a brain cell you realize that you just _miss him _ . You could give fuck all if he was your boyfriend or whatever ironic super no-homo name he wanted to call you right now because you miss _him_. And you don’t _care_ if it _is_ as your annoying friend with the long-winded analogies and the ironic music and the fragile-st of masculinities, you just wish he was here right now. You can almost picture him, eating the bag of chips he left on your fucking floor and licking his fingers while laughing at the fact that you find any of what's going on on-screen even remotely entertaining. You’d kick him and send a pillow flying in his direction while watching the stupid characters move in the reflection of his glasses.

The laugh track pulls you back to reality, cruelly reminding you that you are, in fact, in bed alone. The half-eaten bag of chips sits untouched on the floor still where he left it. There is no one here to snort at your horrible taste in television, no one for you to kick to shut up, and instead of hurling the pillow you bring it close to your chest and bury your face in it. 

You wish it was someone else you were holding.

You can’t ignore the wetness anymore and you allow yourself to do what you haven’t up until this very moment and _ sob. _A full-body kind of sob, a heartbroken kind of sob. You think of the countless romances you’ve watched play out across your television screen almost obsessively and you think you get it. 

You don’t _feel _like Katherine Heigl, and you definitely don’t know _when _your blonde _ Not-Exactly-Ashton-Kutcher _will break through the door and tell you that it's okay and that he's got you. You actually don’t know that he ever will.

What you do feel is sadness, all-consuming. With every break between sobs to wrack in a desperate breath, you feel it more and more. You’re aware that you’ve cried before, you know for a fact that you’ve felt sadness prior to this moment but it's different now. You think you get it.

You think about yourself, about how pathetic you are. You torture yourself with what-ifs and can’t help but think, ‘_If I was leaner, taller, if my voice didn’t crack the way it does, if my hips didn’t flare out the way they do... If I didn’t ask for too much, If I wasn't too much. If I was somehow enough.’ _

You know you’re making things worse but you can’t help it, it's one of the things you hate most about yourself.

You wonder if he's sad. You would never wish that on him, especially not a sadness like the one you are consumed by, but a part of you yearns for a reassurance that it didn’t mean more to you than it ever did to him, as unreasonable as that is. 

It's another thing you hate about yourself.

But you were the burden, you were the problem like you always are, you _had _to be. Asking and demanding and _pushing _and _too much, way too much _but _never enough_. You wish you could shield yourself from the knowledge that all of your happiness ends because of you but you can’t. You wish you had the ability to repress, to push down, to hide behind something like irony or corny jokes or _damned sunglasses_. You're too tired to partake in your patented over the top irritability, you’re just sad. 

You fucking hate that about yourself too.

As you wrench out another sob and you squeeze the pillow tighter and wish you’d been _better, _ instead of _too much but not enough. _You hear the peeling laugh track again, you know you haven’t touched the remote but it feels louder this time. You feel eyes on you and the laughing won’t stop, it only grows crueler, so you scoot down your bed and pull your blanket over your head.

You breathe heavily, arms wrapped tight and face buried deep in your pillow, and you _really _fucking wish it was someone else.

**Author's Note:**

> ** "I need to know that you're not gonna wake up in the morning and feel differently."**  
****   
  
  
  
** "And I can't give you that. Nobody can." **  
****   
  
  
** (500) Days of Summer ******


End file.
